Hypothalamus
Lucy Zhang
It’s an almond, she tells me, probing thin, long metal chopsticks through two holes in my skull. You know how these things bind receptors, secrete hormones into the bloodstream like honey dripping from a golden spoon. The apple is on hiatus. At this age, the Queen can't remember which flasks have undergone oxidation-reduction reactions, which kill, which anti-age. Now stay still, she says. The sun is going to peel my skin away before she finishes. Prods laterally, then deeply. I ask for apples anyway. Wrong spot: stick nicks pituitary gland. Thought you’d killed your appetite long ago. A feather for the casket, an eyelash for your fingertip, a finch could carry you. I hush my stomach, coax orexin into the soil, under earthworms and bone and glass chipped from a mirror. My blinks grow into skies. Is this right? I ask. She plucks and pinches, replaces hormone secretion with snow, rubies, ebony. Best preserved like hard liquor, childhood observed from a distance. She withdraws the sticks, seals my skull. I ask for apples and receive air.
